Friday, January 9, 2015

The Anasazi Bellows Part I, Leaving Phoenix (again)

I thought I had already written this
story, or parts of it, but I can't find it in the index. I need to be
more organized. If it's already posted, well, here it is again.
Probably a little different. I wanted to work in The Apache Bellows.
I just can't help but think it was already written. I get confused
sometimes, because I often work through the telling of these stories
orally, to a lot of different people, before I write them. This is
certainly a story I tell a lot, and cannot imagine I haven't written
it.

I'll lay a little back story out on
this version.

After Maya passed and I broke all those
bones, I spent a few weeks back in Phoenix, in a tin shed. When I was
just healed enough to ride a bicycle, I headed back out to The
Forest.

It was March, and brutally cold yet up
at my home at Bear Canyon, but a heatwave in the Valley of the Sun. I was going to have to find a place to
lay up until about May. I consulted the fourth floor at Burto-Barr
library. I searched the trail maps and topographs for a location the
easiest distance I could find from the Mogollon Rim that would
provide me with the climate and resources I would need.

Fossil Creek, below Strawberry, seemed
my best bet. I could get there via trails I had found that traverse
the Matazal Mountains I could always be within three miles of water.
Then, when the weather broke to the north, I would leave the Fossil
environs and follow The General Crook Trail up to familiar haunts in
the high country.

I'm glad now, that the plan didn't work
out that way or else I might still be waiting for somebody to find my
bleached bones out there in that vast underexplored Matazal
Wilderness. We'll get to that.

I acquired a mountain bike and
outfitted it with solid tubes. I built a trailer for the bike, and
loaded it with water and food and all my gear in two duffel bags and
a big rubbermaid container that resembles the tool box of a
contractor's truck. I also carried a few personal Items that I
wished not to take. I intended to leave my home at 75th
avenue and ride to Chandler Arizona and leave these few mementos and
family photos with my friend Sunshine.

I rode down 74th avenue to
Broadway and then took 67th avenue across the Salt River
and past a farm stand. As I turned onto Southern, my bike trailer
collapsed with no hope of repair. I found a piece of cardboard in the
ditch and made a sign. “Bike for Sale. Need Help. A truck full of
Mexican Landscapers stopped and sold me a four wheeled cart from Home
Depot for $50.00 and took the remains of my trailer with them. From
here, I had to steer with one hand while with the other I dragged the
heavy cart with my gear.

Progressing eastward on Southern, I
began to see how rough this would be. It would take me days at this
rate to reach Sunshine's place in Chandler. It was more than a hundred degrees. I was sweltering. I turned south on 59th
avenue. It being mostly desert I thought I would have to worry little
about traffic. I'd gone about a half mile, my arm failing me as a
trailer hitch, when I was overtaken and accosted by a stereotype.

I should say here, that I was taking up
about a third of the road with my unlikely caravan. I had chosen 59th
for it's lack of housing and hopefully traffic. No such luck.

The huge white Cadillac crept up on me
silently and laid on his horn. Then he sped up and with a screech of
tires, pulled around me and cut me off. A fat white man in his early
sixties emerged from the behemoth with the admonition that I knew not
who he was. He wore Bermuda shorts, penny loafers with corroded
nickle in them, and a Hawaiian shirt. He was right. I didn't know
him. My mind wound back through news footage of local authorities and
came up blank. His attitude bespoke Sheriff Joe Arpaio, but his face
was unfamiliar.

He wore mirrored shades and a Greg
Norman Shark hat. The hat failed to hide the fact that he was
balding, sweaty, and angry.I could see belly hair between the gap at the bottom of his too-short shirt.

He told me it was illegal for me to be
taking up the road like I was and that with a single phone call he
would call down upon me a fury of law enforcement the likes of which
I'd never dreamed. Then he continued to tell me the numerous
indignities and inconveniences I would be subjected to as well as repeating his assertion that I did not know who I was dealing with. He finished
his rant by asking me what I thought of it.

I told him I wasn't any happier with
the situation than he was. I unfolded the tale of the collapsed
trailer and the journey so far. I assured him that at the nearest pay
phone, I would make arrangements to ditch the trailer and that I
chose this road for it's lack of traffic, pointing out that he had
blocked the road completely now for several minutes and no traffic
had approached. He returned to his caddy, shouted that he'd see me in
jail, and sped off.

I wondered why an upstanding citizen like him, Greg Norman fan and all, would be in jail. It was probably about then that I
realized my newly shaved head was blistering from the sun.

I made Cesar Chavez Park at sundown,
and made myself a bed. I woke several times throughout the night with
police spotlights in my face, but none ever hassled me further. In
the morning, I set up my camp stove and proceeded to make oatmeal
when a squad car approached and two officers emerged. Apparently, it
was okay to sleep at the park, just not to cook there. They
recommended I adjourn to a nearby Circle K to prepare my morning meal
and I obliged, thankfully.

The Circle K at 35th avenue
and Baseline is frequented, in the early morning hours, by workmen in
search of coffee, water, ice, and gasoline. After breakfast, I sold
the Home Depot cart and Rubbermaid container to visiting contractors
for the fifty I had in the cart and twenty more. They left me with
some milk crates into which I sifted the contents of the container. I
called Sunshine to appraise her of my fortunes, and she came and
picked up those artifacts I relocated to the crates that she would store for me; saving a trip to
Chandler. She wept when she left, professing a certainty that I would
never return and it would be our last meeting.

There happened to be a bus stop on the
corner, and I loaded up the bike and mounted for the Greyhound
station. I had a new plan. I would bus to Camp Verde and then hike to
Fossil Springs where I could pick up the trail north. I got off the
bus a few blocks from the station, at a spot I knew would have the
most traffic. I worked the sidewalk there, until I sold the bicycle.

At the bus station, knowing I had more
than the seventy five pounds allotted at the time for luggage, I
hooked my toe under each bag in turn on the scale and lifted. My ruse
proved successful, as they charged me no extra. While I waited for my
bus, I was entertained by INS agents chasing a fella out and around
and through the terminal. It was like an episode of Scooby Doo when
they run in one door and out the other being chased by ghouls.

Eventually, I got my bus and was able
to relax a few. I had no idea how profoundly the next twenty four
hours would affect my life.

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About Me

I was arrested for possession of LSD in 1992 and threatened with a 42 year sentence. I split and spent the next fifteen years as a fugitive. The last five years I lived in the forests of Arizona. These are essays about some adventures I had during my journey to freedom .